Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.

San Francisco: 1959

First Unitarian Church at 1187 Franklin Street in San Francisco. Built in 1889, it seems to have survived the 1906 earthquake and fire nicely. Anscochrome taken by my father in August 1959. View full size.

Ansco sold a 500 a.s.a. film that I tried out on R&R in Hong Kong in the late sixties. A bit grainy but it had a lovely pastel-like color. I quite liked it and somewhere I have a few slides, that survived many a move, to this day.

Beyond the red car (Buick?) in the grassy spot is the burial place of the Reverend Thomas Starr King, Universalist minister of First Unitarian Church, and one of the most influential and significant personalities of the Civil War period. He has often given credit for keeping California in the Union; he raised huge sums for the Sanitary Commission (some Sanitary Commission photos somewhere on Shorpy)and died young.

Until recently his statue was in Statuary Hall of the US Capitol, along with Father Serra, representing California. His portrait can be seen in the California Capitol.

When I was in 3rd grade I attended Thomas Starr King Elementary School in Long Beach, California.

A nice 1954 Buick Special 2-door hardtop right in front, then a late '40s Chrysler product, a '57 Chevy station wagon, and the back end of a '59 Ford. Looks like a '51-'52 chevy 2-door post going by in the background.

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.